


Nothing to lose (but everything to gain)

by StarOverHeaven



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Do not repost this work to another site, Found Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-17 18:40:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28729797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarOverHeaven/pseuds/StarOverHeaven
Summary: Niki beats Phil in the race to revive Wilbur first.
Relationships: THIS IS NOT SHIP FIC
Comments: 5
Kudos: 50





	Nothing to lose (but everything to gain)

In the grand scheme of things, the requirements aren’t as deep or as dark as someone would think. She didn’t have access to the sword that had slayed him, didn’t have access to the person that did, but she had something else. Something better. Sure, it was darker than the blackest of magics, terrible and ancient and far too unstable to be using, but really what was a little sacrifice compared to what they’d lost? 

The blood dripped fresh from her hands, and it felt like resurrection. 

Her memories of him had faded with time, but she still remembered so much of him so vividly. He had been too tall, all of him built muscle grown from too much fighting. He had joked about her being short, smiling and happy. His hugs had been firm and strong, and he’d been as sturdy as an anchor in the worst of storms for almost all the time she’d known him. 

Wil. 

She missed him, even during those last moments. When she’d watched him ask his father to kill him, it had been like she’d been stabbed as well. Betrayed by both Wilbur and Techno as she watched the nation she’d fought for crumble beneath eleven and a half stacks of TNT built by her friend’s own hand. He’d been an anchor once, unmoving. But she’d never thought about the fact that anchors without a ship had no purpose, and would only rust away. 

The way he’d collapsed into himself was vivid in her mind. He had rusted away and nobody noticed. He had varied in behaviour, either walking too-tall or with a strange prowling slouch like a predator searching for prey as he paced Pogtopia’s walkways. He had gestured too sharply, his eyes were a little too tired, his words less careful and planned. 

Wilbur’s eyes had been too empty or full of mania, swapping between too-focused and barely-there without a hint of warning. Wilbur had smiled and wrapped a coat around her shoulders when she’d arrived, always so focused on protecting others that he didn’t know how to ask for help as he rotted away. He had walked into a battlefield armorless and tired, and smiled as he pulled back the string of his bow and aimed to fire. 

He’d always been a good actor. He’d pretended to be okay until he wasn’t, and Niki hadn’t seen it until it was too late. 

Time passed and the wound healed. L’manberg was rebuilt in wood and warmth, lanterns set to float above what had once been a crater. She’d seen Phil bringing in fish and coral, once, with a sad smile on his face for every flipper that disappeared with a plop into the water. It had been beautiful to see the way time had healed the land’s wounds with help from those who lived there. 

Now it was all gone again, a crater where her once-home had been. She was so tired of fighting. So tired of war and bloodshed and seeing her friends suffer, eyes wide and terrified and pained as they watched it all crumble again. 

She remembered the happy days of what L’manberg had been, tall walls of safety and warmth of family and friends. That time had long passed, people forgetting what L’manberg had been, what it stood for. 

The tree burned with the death of L’manberg, and she felt no guilt or pain. Only a sense of relief, long awaited and deeply felt. But the death of L’manberg would not bring back her friends, her family, her people. They had been built and then ruined by L’manberg. But If there was one thing Niki Nihachu was, it was determined. 

She spent weeks gathering what she could on the subject before she figured she had the answer. It wasn’t guaranteed. There was a chance that Wilbur’s soul had already departed, especially with L’manberg gone. But the slim chance that it hadn’t yet fuelled her. Fundy had said he’d seen his father’s ghost, and while she doubted it was true - 

If it was, the chance it would work outweighed the risk that it didn’t. 

She spends days gathering what she needs. The bones of Wilbur’s first death from the Final Control Room, the corridor behind it recently spattered with blood far fresher than the old stains in the main room. A familiar uniform, folded away in Pogtopia in a chest hidden in the dark. A vial of Fundy’s blood that Niki had collected without the fox’s knowledge. 

A totem covered in soul sand with redstone dust over the eyes, one that had been bathed in the blood of someone with a spare life to give to an old friend who’d lost all of his. 

A diamond sword, dull and empty of magic that could interrupt the ritual. Symbolic, since she couldn’t get the original. Several books stolen from a library hidden in a sewer, signed by a familiar name with familiar handwriting that she hadn’t been able to make herself read. 

A piece of blackstone and yellow concrete from the original walls, the materials that had been stored away in a chest from when she’d been conscripted with the rest of the citizens to take down the wall. Enderpearls in place of eyes in a skull. A lighter, one that had been loaned to her with a smile so very long ago, returned to hands that were no longer there. 

A black capelet given to her to push away the chill of Pogtopia’s caverns. A soul lantern hung from the handle of the sword, shining with the light of a Wither’s star where a heart should be. 

She sat by the items and sang until her voice was gone and her heart felt cold, the words of an anthem of a dead nation at first. As she sang, the words fell like whispers from her tongue, unfamiliar yet instinctive. 

On her wrist, the three hearts there began to bleed and drip to the floor, staining the flag laying over the stone. When the blood stopped and her voice ceased, it was two instead of three, and the torches had flickered out and run out of fuel hours ago. 

Niki let her eyes fall closed, her cheeks wet with tears. In the silence, the sound of something moving was like a gunshot. Her eyes shot open as a hand touched her cheek, slightly too cold yet somehow warm as they wiped away tears. 

“Wilbur?” Her voice cracked on the sound of her hope. 

“Niki.” He whispered back, voice raspy and brown eyes glinting with red in the dark as the sun rose and lit the tunnel behind her. She flung herself at him, struggling between joy and grief, and his arms were an anchor as they wrapped around her, as she buried her face in his shoulder and sobbed over the remains of an old flag. 

Wilbur curled tight around her, eyelids low as he focused on the beat of her heart and the sound of her breathing. He pretended not to feel his empty lungs and still heart, and pretended he didn’t see the black scratches of his wrist where hearts should have been, how the edges of the scratches glinted in gold. The room brightened as the sun lifted, fading from red to gentle golds and whites. 

“L’manberg is gone, Wil.” Niki whispers finally, tears long dried as her grief faded. Her heart feels full yet empty, a fire burning without any kindling. She lets her head fall against Wilbur’s shoulder again and closes her eyes. 

“Good. They didn’t deserve her, anyway.” He whispers back, and smiles even though she can’t see it when she laughs. It’s disbelieving but not unhappy, not betrayed. It is a relief to hear instead of the quiet tears, loud in the silence as she shakes with it. Snow falls into the stairway behind her and he watches it, eyebrows furrowing with thought. 

_Phil. Techno._

_(on the other side of the world, Phil grieved as Ghostbur flickered and disappeared and didn’t come back before he’d even gotten a chance to revive his son)_

“I have somewhere safe for us.” Wilbur whispers, and Niki takes his hand when he stands and offers to help her up. His coat is just as frayed as it once was, the trench coat’s edges ashy and dull. His eyes are warm and tired, but not infected with an incurable mania like they had once been. “I think you’d like it there, if you give it a chance.” 

Niki is quiet for a moment, face lowered. Then she lifts her head and meets his eyes. “I have a horse outside.” She says instead of an agreement to stay, merely an agreement to try. 

Wilbur’s smile is a quirk of the lips more than anything, but he follows her when she leads him outside into the snowy landscape beyond, stumbling up the steps and squinting with a hand over his eyes into the brightness. A day later, they arrive at a house sitting alone in a snowy field, and as Wilbur steps forward after dismounting he is engulfed in a hug of both arms and wings, tearful and yet so happy to see him again. 

Wilbur laughs and Phil squeezes him until he can’t make a sound from lack of air in his lungs, and Niki smiles despite herself. When Techno comes out of the house, armed and yet more wary than aggressive, she greets him with fire in her eyes. Phil considers her with warmth in his own, somehow seeming older than twice his years. 

“I hope you’re patient,” He says, and his smile is fond. “Because it takes a lot of it to live around here.” 

She considers him for a long moment, as solid as any anchor who’s ship had long since sailed and been decommissioned. “I think I've got enough.” She says, and smiles back. 

**Author's Note:**

> get this queen into anarchy family 2k21  
> the sheer power & passion niki emits in every big roleplay event would make the earth quiver tbh. imagine if she joined forced with techno, phil AND wil. like. what is dream gonna do tbh??  
> also she deserves to retire and watch her newfound family raze the smp to the ground ngl
> 
> also casual reminder niki has never met ghostbur and has no idea he exists :ok_hand:


End file.
